Easy DIY Garden Markers Using My Cricut Maker

This is a sponsored post written by me on behalf of Cricut. All opinions are 100% mine.

Hey there friends, I am so excited to be sharing my most recent garden DIY! This summer we have spent a lot of time outside working in the yard, improving our garden, creating a more self sustainable life for ourselves. And of course, I am a bit overzealous about things not only being functional but stylish and cute as well. So, today I want to share how I made some super stylish and adorable garden markers using my Cricut Maker, some aluminum sheet metal, and their engraving tool. Yes, can you believe that you can do engraving with the Cricut Maker? I was so excited when I learned about this. How fun to create with their engraving tool. The Cricut Maker is one of the most versatile cutting machines I have seen. Personally, I have used it to cut a variety of fabric, basswood, chipboard, craft board, vinyl, card stock and leather. There are over 300 different materials that the Cricut Maker can cut. Now, with all those materials, they have doubled down with some amazing cutting tools to cover just about any craft or DIY project you want to tackle. I love using their debossing and drawing tools specifically, but also love the scoring tool, perforation tool, and their basic knife as well as their deep blade knife. I feel like I can cut just about anything! Now, I haven’t been able to try out their engraving tool and have been wanting to for some time, and these DIY garden markers were the perfect project to use it on. Theres a great combo set of tools that can give you all you need, plus its on sale!

The engraving tool can be used on a wide variety of materials including:

• Acetate & Foil Acetate
• Aluminum, 0.5mm sheets
• Copper, 40-gauge sheets
• Faux Leather
• Foil Holographic Kraft Board
• Foil Poster Board
• Garment Leather
• Genuine Leather
• Glitter Cardstock
• Heavy Watercolor Paper
• Kraft Board
• Metallic Leather
• Metallic Poster Board
• Shimmer Paper
• Sparkle Paper
• Tooling Leather, 2-3oz, 4-5oz, 6-7oz
• Transparency
• Vinyl Record

For these DIY garden markers, I wanted to use some of Cricut’s pre cut aluminum sheets. These make creating things so easy because they come in a couple different sizes, which makes it easy to use for specific projects. I really wanted to use these metal sheets on my garden markers so that they held up and were more durable. I also wanted to create something that was cute…because, thats just me haha. These garden markers were really easy to make, and I was pleasantly surprised at how easy it was to use the engraving tool and how amazing they turned out.

Want to know how to make these super cute DIY garden makers? Check out the tutorial below!

First, you want to create your design in Design Space. I love using design space, especially on my iPad. I can create designs any where I am! I have created a handful of different signs for different veggies, and you can access the design here. One thing I have found is that I have to hide all the designs but one when I go to engrave. I engrave one design at a time and then I hide that design and unhide the next design. You can hide certain parts of your designs by clicking on the eye images on the right side of your screen where they are listed. If you are using the aluminum sheets by Cricut, then you will want to make sure to select the aluminum in the materials list. I had to browse the materials to find it. You want to place your precut aluminum sheets on the Cricut cutting mat and tape down the sides. This prevents it from moving at all. I haven’t had any move without the tape, but it’s just best to be safe. Proceed to starting the engraving, and watch the Cricut do its thing! It is so cool. Once they are all cut out you can use a bit of black paint of marker to darken in the engraving to give it a bit more pop. Simple brush it on with a small brush and then wipe off the excess. You can see in the image below how much more it stands out. Next I cut my wood for the garden marker. You could come up with many other ways to make these, but I wanted to use some leftover salvaged wood, which I do with many other projects. We cut a piece of wood that was 1 by 2 inches wide and cut it abut 12 inches long. We cut an angle on the top at 22 1/2 degrees. I wanted these to have an angle to them so you could see the engraved pieces. I nailed the board onto the top of the 1 by 2 piece of wood using our brad nailer. I then used a tiny drill bit to drill 4 holes into the corners of the engraved aluminum pieces and used tiny upholstery tacks to secure the aluminum plates to the board. You could easily glue these plant markers with silicone or Gorilla Glue. I liked the look of the tacks on the corners, and I already had them in my stash. Aren’t they cute? I am so excited about my new garden markers! With all the work we have done in the garden this year, I really wanted to take it up a notch and create some really great plant markers. Now my plants look even better with their own custom plant markers! I painted the wood on the plant markers to contrast with the wood garden boxes and coordinate with my greenhouse. My broccoli sure does look cuter with its own plant marker.

My carrots are also super happy with their own custom sign!

 

My pumpkins are also so very excited about their sign.

 

These DIY garden markers were quite easy to make. I used some leftover wood that wasn’t the prettiest and painted it. I figure if it is going in the garden, we didn’t need to use the nicest wood we had. Now, my plants have these cute little markers so that the kids can see what each plant is and it makes it all look so cute. Using the aluminum sheets from Cricut was such an easy way to create something unique and perfect for my garden space. They will be durable and long lasting as well.